On Tuesday, February 11^th, US Senator Tom Udall and US Representative Alan Lowenthal introduced unprecedented federal legislation to address the plastic pollution crisis.

“The plastic pollution crisis is past the tipping point: our communities, our waterways, and even our bodies are at risk. We are already bearing the cleanup costs of mountains of plastic waste, and it will only get worse for future generations. We have a responsibility to act now before the overwhelming public health, environmental, climate and economic effects of plastic pollution reach the point of no return. Our solutions are not only possible—they are practical and are already being implemented in cities and states across the country, including in my home state of New Mexico. But we need a comprehensive, national strategy to tackle this tidal wave of pollution before it is too late. We must drive the innovation necessary to break free from this unnecessary, toxic waste stream that is also accelerating the destruction of our planet via climate change. This bill calls on all of us, from companies to communities, to address this crisis head-on so that we can create a plastic pollution free world.” – US Senator Tom Udall

In short, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020 offers a common-sense, comprehensive systems-based approach to address the plastic pollution crisis. It has tremendous potential to launch our nation’s resources in the right direction— increasing accountability, responsibility, and management efficacy.

Here’s an overview of its key provisions:

Mandating Producer Responsibility

Each time we dispose of packaging materials—whether plastic, paper, glass, or metal—the waste management burden trickles down to local and state governments. In effect, there is a strong disconnect between the design, production, and waste management phases associated with any given product.

The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act sets forth requirements for producer responsibility including the development, implementation, and administration of necessary collection and reprocessing programs. This includes co-ops between producers, cleanup efforts through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and investment in recycling and composting infrastructure.

Requiring Nationwide Container Refunds

Incentives are a powerful force for motivating changes in individual and corporate practices. With that in mind, this bill proposes a requirement for customers to be eligible for a 10 cent refund in return for used beverage containers. If unclaimed, the refunds would go back to beverage producers to supplement their investments in collection and recycling infrastructure.

Source Reduction

The bill also sets important benchmarks for changes in production and consumption: “Beginning in January 2022, some of the most common single-use plastic products that pollute our environment, cannot be recycled, and have readily available alternatives will be source reduced and phased out from sale and distribution.”

This will include prohibitions on plastic carryout bags, some food and drink containers, and expanded polystyrene products (also known as Styrofoam).

Additionally, the bill calls for federally-funded studies and literature analysis on plastic tobacco filters, electronic cigarette parts, and derelict fishing gear to guide federal agencies in enacting pollution mitigation policies.

Carryout Bag Fee

What’s more effective than incentives? Disincentives— that’s right! This boils down to a principle of behavioral economics called loss aversion: people dislike losses more than they enjoy benefits.

As a disincentive for consumers to use fewer plastic bags, the bill proposes a fee on carryout bags. The money generated by this fee would be used to fund access to reusable bags, local cleanup efforts, and improved recycling infrastructure. Alternatively, a business could retain the fee if they implement an incentive program that credits customers who opt for bringing their own reusable bags.

Minimum Recycled Content Requirement

With a new wave of investment and research being devoted to recycling infrastructure across the nation, this bill intends to support a growth in the supply of recycled plastic. The minimum recycled content requirement would mandate for beverage containers, such as plastic bottles, to be produced with a certain percentage of recycled content. This threshold would be set to increase overtime so that producers are constantly being encouraged to use less virgin plastic.

The EPA would also be required to implement recycled content minimums for other products, but this is dependent on assessment of technological feasibility by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Recycling and Composting

Conflicting and out-right misleading labels on packaging have made responsible waste management frustratingly inconsistent and demoralizing for most well-meaning consumers. To address this issue, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act calls for the EPA to develop standardized recycling and composting labels for both products and receptacles to encourage proper sorting and disposal.

Encouraging Domestic Responsibility

Every minute, it is estimated that the equivalent of 60 doubledecker busloads of plastic waste are burned or dumped in developing countries. Current rates of mismanagement due to exploitative trade policies pose serious health, safety, and environmental risks beyond our borders. Poorly managed waste serves as a breeding ground for vector-borne diseases, contributes to global climate change, and has even been found to increase rates of violence in urban areas. Conservative estimates attribute over one-million annual deaths to the adverse health effects of these practices.

The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act addresses the export of plastic waste, scraps, and pairings to non-OECD countries.

Protecting Existing Action

One of the reasons that this bill is a significant achievement for plastic waste reduction advocates is its unmatched scope. We have never seen a body of federal legislation proposed to directly address the plastic pollution crisis; any existing progress has been the result of market-based changes or efforts from lower levels of government. This Act has the potential to elevate accountability and sustainability in product design, manufacturing, distribution, and waste management in much more comprehensive way.

“We are running out of time to deal with this crisis of our own creation, and this legislation is a bold first step on the path to implementing lasting solutions.”  – US Senator Tom Udall

Although we have not seen any federal action on these issues, state and local governments have already enacted legislation to address the plastic pollution crisis within the bounds of their reach. Many of these local officials have been motivated by a more intimate understanding of the threats posed by single-use plastics on local economies in coastal communities, poor health outcomes for vulnerable populations exposed to their eco-toxic effects, and the substantial contribution of the plastic life cycle to heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. Importantly, this bill protects state and local governments’ previous actions. It also supports their enactment of more stringent standards, requirements, and product bans as deemed appropriate.

Pause New Plastic

Finally, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act provides time for federal agencies to “investigate the cumulative impacts of new and expanded plastic-producing facilities on the air, water, climate, and communities before issuing new permits to increase plastic production.”

To address the impacts of existing producers, this legislation would call for the EPA to update regulations for the elimination of plastic pollution from industrial facilities. It would also encourage updates to the Clean Air and Clean Water Act emission and discharge standards to ensure that plastic-producing facilities integrate the latest technology for pollution prevention.

With the rapid spread of sensational images and heart-wrenching video clips capturing the physical impacts of marine debris, many of us have been faced with the reality that plastic is the least favorable material for environmental health. Social media and digital campaigns help these stories to spread rapidly, but conflicting messages about different materials may also create unproductive online debates.

What makes this conveniently durable, widespread material more harmful than alternatives? The answer lies in the process: the life cycle of plastics.

Plastics are a category of synthetic polymers. They were designed by chemists seeking a strong, lightweight, and flexible material for consumer products. Polymers abound in nature! Cellulose, the material that makes up the cell walls of plants, is a very common natural polymer.

Synthetic, man-made polymers may be derived from natural substances like cellulose, but more often they are made using the plentiful carbon atoms in fossil fuels (such as methane gas or petroleum). These inputs allow for especially long branching to occur during polymerization chemical reactions.

Since humans learned how to create and manipulate synthetic plastics nearly 150 years ago, they’ve become a more prominent part of our lives. Most consumer products are made using some type of plastic polymer and many are surrounded by plastic packaging.

Extraction

The first step in creating a plastic product is the extraction of crude oil or methane gas. There are two main methods for these large-scale operations: mining and drilling.

Mining is used to extract solid fossil fuels by digging, scraping, or otherwise exposing buried resources. This often results in huge volumes of excess rock and soil being dumped into adjacent valleys and streams, affecting marine life and water flow. Extraction sites are also often left with poor soil and damaged land that is more prone to mudslides, landslides, flashfloods, and toxic water pollution in adjacent communities.

One Harvard University study assessed the life cycle costs and public health effects of coal from 1997 to 2005. The researchers found a link to lung, cardiovascular, and kidney diseases (such as diabetes and hypertension) and an elevated occurrence of low birth rate and pre-term births associated with surface mining practices. The total estimated cost came out to $74.6 billion every year, equivalent to 4.36 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.

Unconventional extraction methods such as natural gas hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ have received a great deal of attention from advocates. Environmental effects of fracking include, but are not limited to, methane and toxic aerosol emissions, resource depletion, harmful wastewater contamination, and increased potential for oil spills and earthquakes. Importantly, all methods of fossil fuel extraction impose massive costs for fenceline communities that live, breathe, and work adjacent to these harmful industrial activities.

Refinement and Cracking

After fossil fuel extraction, the raw materials are shipped to a refinery. The goals of refinement are to derive the building blocks for plastic production: ethane from crude oil and propane from natural gas. At a cracking plant, ethane and propane are then chemically broken down into ethylene and propylene.

Processing and Manufacturing

Chemical modification of ethylene and polyethylene through catalyzed polymerization produces resins. Resins are the core ingredient used to produce the durable, flexible plastics we’ve all grown dependent upon. This chemical processing can be carried out in several different ways, leading to a variety of plastic products. That’s what those numbers on the bottom of many plastic products are used to indicate!

Resins are subject to high temperature and pressue, then cooled in order to make pre-production plastic pellets called ‘nurdles.’ These plastic nurdles are the input used by manufacturers to mold and form the plastic products we use.

For example, polyethylene plastics are used to make supermarket bags and water bottles. Meanwhile, polystyrene is best known in its brittle form marketed as Styrofoam, but the same chemical building blocks are used to create toy figurines and CD cases.

Differences in the end products of plastic production are partly due to use of chemical additives that may enhance or suppress chemical properties. When mismanaged or littered plastic waste accumulates in our oceans as marine debris, plastic additives pose notable eco-toxicological risks for marine species and humans.

Distribution and Consumption

Since 1950, approximately 9.2 billion tons of plastic have been produced— 40% of which comes from single-use products such as shopping bags, cutlery, and take-out-ware. Check out this National Geographic video to learn more!

Individuals have the power to change the prominence of plastic in the consumer products industry. By changing our purchasing priorities and seeking more plastic-free alternatives, we can urge companies to embrace more environmentally-favorable materials and create more durable, reusable products.

Waste Management

Given all the resources and energy used to produce each plastic product, it’s important that we responsibly use and dispose of any plastics we already own. We can re-use, re-purpose, and up-cycle the plastics we have to make the most of their use before discarding them. This can be as simple as storing batteries in an empty take-out container or using a frayed toothbrush to clean hard to reach crevices in your coffee maker or fish tank. Get creative!

In Miami-Dade and Broward County, hard plastic narrow-neck bottles may be recycled in municipal single-stream recycling bins. Plastic grocery bags, toothbrushes, clamshell containers, and food packaging are only recyclable through third-party entities such as Terracycle or your local grocery store. They are considered contamination in your curbside recycling bin.

When plastics are separated for recycling, they are transported to a materials recovery facility for sorting. Then, they are taken to a reclaiming plant where the material is flaked, washed, and formed into new resin nurdles for manufacturing.

Recycling may be the best way to dispose of plastics that can no longer be re-used, but it is important to understand that recycling is not a long-term solution for the plastic waste crisis. Recycling is logistically challenging, energy-intensive, and can be counterproductive by reinforcing plastic consumption. Plastics are also not infinitely recyclable. Each time the material is flaked and reprocessed into nurdles, it produces a lower quality plastic that will ultimately lose its ability to be recycled.

Problems presented by the entire life cycle of plastics must best addressed by a combination of (1) increased consumer education and motivated reduction in plastic purchases and (2) regulation of plastic producers and polluters to minimize the production of plastics and harmful effects of their industrial activities.